Pinocchio: Archetype of the Motherless Child

Carlo Collodi's The Adventures of Pinocchio has to stand, along with Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful World of Oz and J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan, as one of the few truly classic pieces of children's literature. For whatever the fate of these authors has been in academic circles—where Carroll has understandably proved the most exciting of the lot—many of the characters they created have become independent entities with lives of their own, free of the vagaries of literary taste and opinion. They seem to have escaped the written page, disowned their makers and become part of the very fabric of twentieth century civilization, in much the same way as the fairies, heroes and ogres found in the folktales of the brothers Grimm, Perrault, Basile and Hans Christian Andersen have returned to the hearths, the taverns and the nurseries from which they were originally gleaned. To some extent theatrical productions, films, cartoon animations and the vast market of children's books have contributed to this process. Yet the resultant success could not have occurred were it not also for a certain profound and universal psychological appeal, transcending the powers of commercialism. A study of Pinocchio may, I think, shed some light on the dark forces of enchantment at work in such tales.

Carlo Lorenzini was born in Florence in 1826, the first of nine children. His father was employed as a cook by the marchesi Garzoni. His mother, a cultured woman of rich sensitivities, worked as a seamstress and chambermaid to the same household. At sixteen years of age Carlo entered the seminary at Val d'Elsa, probably with the financial aid of the marchese since his parents were short of funds at the time.¹ There he studied Latin, scholastic philosophy and theology, graduating with honors four years later. Feeling unsuited to an ecclesiastical career, however, he left the seminary and turned to journalism, a profession in which he was to exploit his biting but inoffensive wit to earn himself a place of respect as a critic and political commentator.²

Lorenzini interrupted his apprenticeship with the Rivista di Firenze in 1848 to fight alongside his fellow Tuscans in the war against the Hapsburg Empire. Upon his return he was made secretary of the Tuscan Senate and shortly thereafter founded a journal of political satire, Il Lampione. In 1849 he was promoted to secretary first class in the provisional government of Tuscany, a post which he resigned after the restoration of Austrian rule. Not surprisingly his journal was soon suppressed. In 1853 he initiated another journal, Lo Scaramuccia, devoted to the dramatic arts. What little political comment he could work into its pages had to be carefully disguised to avoid the ubiquitous eye of the censors.

In April, 1859, Piedmont again declared war against Austria and Lorenzini abandoned his flourishing career—between 1850 and 1859 he had published a number of books on a wide variety of subjects—to fight as a volunteer on the plains of Lombardy. He returned after the Peace of Villafranca and was named secretary of the Prefecture of Florence. There he remained until 1881, inaugurating a number of significant educational reforms during his term of office. In 1860 he reopened Il Lampione, picking up where he had left off eleven years before. In that same year he published a little book in defense of the unification of Italy, Il sig. Albèrt ha ragione, which carried for the first time the pseudonym of Collodi—the name of a small town near Pescia where his mother had been born and where he had spent so many happy holidays as a young child.

What turned Collodi to children's books was, ironically, the pressure of gambling debts. With his creditors growing impatient and his usual income too meagre to meet their demands, he contracted to translate three of Perrault's contes and a selection of fables from de Beaumont and d'Aulnoy. The collection appeared in 1875 as I racconti delle Fate. Soon afterwards he put his pedagogical skills to...